Varney and Cogswell

Abigail (Varney) Low came of the families that made the parish of Chebacco. Her great-great-grandfather John Cogswell was shipwrecked at Pemaquid in 1635 and given three hundred acres at Chebacco, and the church there began in his son William's house; her grandmother, Abigail (Proctor) Varney, led, it is said, the women who raised the Chebacco meeting house in 1679 against the Council's order; and her great-uncle was John Proctor, hanged at Salem in 1692.

William Varney was at Ipswich by the 1640s, and died in the winter of 1653/4, leaving his widow Bridget with three sons and a daughter. His son Thomas, a corporal, married Abigail Proctor, daughter of John Proctor, the husbandman who had come over on the Susan & Ellin in 1635 with his wife Martha and their son John, three. In 1668 Thomas Varney signed the Chebacco neighbours' petition for Thomas Wells and his wife with Thomas Low, jr., and Martha Low, and when the Chebacco people were brought to court in 1679 for raising their meeting house, he answered "for his wife." In 1692 he signed the Ipswich petition for his brother-in-law John Proctor and Proctor's wife Elizabeth, judging them "Innocent of the crime objected," with Deacon Thomas Low and Rev. John Wise. Proctor was hanged on 19 August, and Thomas died at Chebacco in December. Abigail lived on there, a widow, until 1731. Their son Thomas, born at Chebacco in 1682, married Abigail Cogswell.

John Cogswell sold his homestead at Westbury, Wiltshire, and on 23 May 1635 embarked at Bristol on the Angel Gabriel with his wife Elizabeth and eight children. The ship was lying off Pemaquid, on the Maine coast, when the great storm of 15 August broke her up. He set up a tent there and lived in it with the goods saved from the wreck, among them the Turkey carpet from his parlour table in England, and by November he was at Ipswich, where the town granted him three hundred acres "at the further Chebokoe." His son William made his home at Chebacco: the first meeting to seek a minister was held in his house in 1677, he gave the land for the meeting house, and in 1683 the council that ordained John Wise met under his roof. William's daughter Susanna was a great-grandmother of President John Adams. William's son, Capt. Adam Cogswell, married Abigail Wise in 1686, probably the minister's sister: a daughter of Joseph Wise, a Roxbury butcher from Bulkington, Warwickshire, and of Mary Tompson, probably a daughter of John Tompson, gentleman, of Little Preston, Northamptonshire, and Alice Freeman. Adam and Abigail's daughter Abigail married Thomas Varney Jr., and their daughter Abigail, born at Chebacco on 14 Oct 1713, married Caleb Low there on 8 Jan 1732/3. Caleb's grandmother was Mary (Wise) Lamb, so the two were second cousins. Abigail was the mother of Nathan Low (1742-1804), and died, probably, on 30 Dec 1800, aged 86.

The line at a glance

The Varneys: William Varney (d. 1653/4) = Bridget (d. 1672) > Corp. Thomas Varney (c. 1639-1692) = Abigail Proctor (d. 1731), daughter of John Proctor (c. 1595-1672) and Martha > Thomas Varney Jr. (b. 1682) = Abigail Cogswell (1688/9-1738) > Abigail Varney (1713-1800) = Caleb Low.

The Cogswells: John Cogswell (1592-1669), of Westbury and the Angel Gabriel = Elizabeth Thomson (d. 1676) > William Cogswell (1619/20-1700), of Chebacco = Susanna Hawkes > Capt. Adam Cogswell (1666/7-1748) = Abigail Wise > Abigail Cogswell = Thomas Varney Jr., above.

The Wises: Henry Wise, of Bulkington = Katherine Willmore > Joseph Wise (1617-1684), butcher, of Roxbury = Mary Tompson (1619-1693), daughter of John Tompson (d. 1626), of Little Preston, and Alice Freeman > Abigail Wise (1666-1729) = Adam Cogswell, above.

The scope walks every ancestor of Abigail Varney. Her husband's side is the Low line, which stops at her. Joseph Wise and Mary Tompson stand in the Low line too, through Caleb's grandmother Mary (Wise) Lamb, and in the Mather and Noyes line, through Abigail Wise's sister Katherine (Wise) Mather.

How sure it is

From Abigail to her grandparents the links are in the records. Her birth, "Abigail, d. Thomas, at Chebacco, Oct. 14, 1713" (Ipswich VR 1:374), names her father, and her mother was Thomas Varney Jr.'s wife Abigail Cogswell (Jameson, The Cogswells in America, 1884, p. 28), who died his wife in 1738 (inferred, proven). Thomas Jr.'s birth names him "s. Corporal" (1682), and the Corporal's wife was Abigail Proctor, on record as such in 1673 and 1679 (inferred, proven). Abigail Proctor's father is documented: her deposition of 1673 about "her father" and "her mother Prockter," her husband's of 1679 about "the house which was formerly his father Procter's," and John Proctor's will of 1672, naming "Abigal Varney" among his four daughters (Essex Quarterly Courts 5:195, 7:218; Probate Records of Essex County 2:315-316). The John Proctor hanged in 1692 was her brother: he is "John Procter 3" of the 1635 ship list, his father's will made him an executor, her husband's deposition of 1679 has him at his father's house with his brother Joseph, and the Ipswich petition of 1692 says he was "of Religious Parents in o'r place" (documented, proven). Corporal Thomas's mother Bridget names "my sonne Thomas Verney" in her will of 1671; William Varney as his father is inferred, probable, since Bridget was William's widow and administered his estate. Abigail Cogswell's birth names her father Adam; her mother, Abigail Wise, is inferred, probable: Adam married Abigail Wise in 1686, and the Cogswell genealogy leaves her surname blank.

Above them the links are compiled and probable: Adam to William Cogswell and Susanna Hawkes, and William to John and Elizabeth Cogswell, from Jameson and the Westbury register as transcribed on WikiTree; Abigail Wise to Joseph Wise and Mary Tompson from Anderson (TAG 56, 1980), as cited on WikiTree, her brother's place as the Chebacco pastor making it highly likely; Joseph Wise to Bulkington from West (NEHGR 177, 2023); and Mary Tompson to John Tompson and Alice Freeman from Torrey (TAG 13), Anderson, Greene and West, an identification Anderson calls probable, not proved. The research is in Low Line Research: Harriet Phillips Low's father's side (Part One, B4-B6, and the addendum of 2 Oct 2026) and Low Master Research (Part Four).

Mollie's typescript drops a generation here: it makes Thomas Varney (b. 1682) the husband of Abigail Proctor, who was his mother, and so the mother of Caleb Low's wife, who was her granddaughter. It does not have the Cogswell line at all. Its Joseph Wise of the Wises of Sydenham, Devon, who came on the Bonaventure in 1636, has nothing behind it, and its Mary Tompson, daughter of Rev. William Tompson of Braintree, cannot be: she married in 1641, and his children were still small in 1643. The death of 13 June 1659 it gives Martha Proctor most likely belongs to the first wife of John Proctor the younger. What it says of Abigail Proctor, her brother and the meeting house the court records confirm (Mollie Frances Holbrook Pfeiffer's typescript: a claim-by-claim review, L17-L18 and T1-T4; books/mollie/checked.yaml).

Open questions

• Abigail (Varney) Low's death: the 1800 entry calls the widow of Caleb "Catharine."
• "Thomas Varney, brother" in Caleb Low's will of 1773: her father, or her brother Thomas (b. 1715)?
• When Thomas Varney Jr. married Abigail Cogswell.
• Bridget Varney's birth and maiden name.
• Martha Proctor's maiden name, and whether she was the "mother Prockter" of 1673.
• John Proctor Sr.'s age: 40 in 1635, or 75 in 1667?
• Anderson's article (TAG 56:80-82), on Abigail Wise as Joseph Wise's daughter.